Shazam actor Zachary Levi has addressed his co-star Rachel Zegler’s divisive comments about Donald Trump and his supporters following the 2024 presidential election.
The 44-year-old actor and vocal Republican starred alongside Zegler in the superhero film’s 2023 sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods as the titular character.
Months later, in the wake of the election results which saw Trump claim a shock second term, Zegler posted on social media: “F*** Donald Trump” and “May Trump supporters never know peace” before later apologising for the remarks.
Speaking to Variety about Zegler’s comments almost seven months later, Levi said: “I am one of those people, obviously. But I think that we have got to recognise that a lot of times people’s decisions are predicated upon the bad information that they’re being fed on a regular basis.”
“So should I hate her because she’s downstream of all of these voices that are telling her that he’s Hitler and the people who vote for him are Nazis? She’s a really talented girl, and I do think that she wants the best for the world deep down,” he said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Levi admitted that, despite endorsing Trump to the detriment of his career, he’s not “a fan of Trump’s Trumpiness” or “the ways that he carries himself a lot of the time.”
He explained: “I understand people’s aversion. Do I think the whole package is somehow perfect? No. In fact, most people who voted for Donald Trump recognise a lot of the imperfections in all of it. Nobody was saying, ‘This is the Orange Messiah.”
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Back in February, Levi said that publicly supporting Trump was more “important” than saving his career, adding that, despite Zegler’s remarks, he had “felt peace” because he knew his vote was important.
“I think we too often fall into these paradigms, these thought processes of self-preservation, and it is not good,” he said.
“We need to be wise and we want to survive and we want to live and flourish and all those things, but we can’t merely make decisions off of, ‘Well I hope nothing bad happens to me. You got to sacrifice.’”
“Like, come on. If I lose all of my acting career...none of that matters. If the world goes off a cliff, what does it matter?”
